Category: Data Analysis

From September 5 to September 30, there is an exciting, free, online conference about the philosophy and science of mind: the (second annual) Minds Online conference! Loads of wonderful scholars are sharing and commenting on each other’s research — and you can access and participate in all of it!

Here are a few things to note for those who are new to online conferences.

Sessions: There are four sessions, each with a different topic and its own keynote.

Timeline: Each session lasts one week. (So the conference lasts four weeks).

Participating: You can read papers starting the weekend before their session. And you you can comment on papers on Monday through Friday of their session.

So head on over and enjoy the wonder that is conferencing from the comfort of your home, office, favorite coffee shop, etc.

I see more fact-checking on Facebook than I used to. While I’m glad to see fact-checking catching on, fact-checking isn’t enough — or so I’ll argue in this post.

1. Fact-checking: The problem

Let’s say that you and I agree on all the facts. Now let’s say that we start arguing. Will we argue well? Not necessarily!

After all, we can reason badly even if we agree on the facts. Specifically, we can jump to conclusions that don’t follow from the facts. So fact-checking our argument(s) won’t necessarily fix all the problems with our argument(s).

Lots of people pay close attention to the US News National University Rankings. But some academics want field-specific rankings. And some academics have created their own. In philosophy, we created the Philosophical Gourmet Report to rank philosophy Ph.D. programs. For many reasons, academic philosophers are becoming more vocal about their criticism of these philosophy rankings (e.g., Bruya 2015, De Cruz 2018). In this post, I will propose a new system. This system will address common complaints about philosophy’s existing ranking system: It will be more versatile, up-to-date, and generalizable.

1. THE COMPLAINTS

The complaints about the rankings are voluminous — what else would you expect from philosophers? In lieu of an outline of every blog post and every public statement, I provide a list of major themes that fall into three different categories: the practice of ranking, the current process of ranking, and the current leadership of the ranking.

Complaints About Ranking

Rankings might misrepresent the magnitude of the differences between departments.

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